Göttingen
Doctoral students beaten with a bamboo stick: Court tightens punishment for professor
The convicted professor between his defense attorney Susanne Frangenberg and his defense attorney Steffen Stern in the Göttingen regional court
© Christina Sticht / DPA
In Göttingen, a professor regularly summoned women who were doing their doctorates with him to his office and then beat them – for which they should thank them. Now a court has sentenced him again.
It was almost a ritual: a professor in Göttingen is said to have ordered his doctoral students alone to his office in the evening. Each time he locked the door from the inside, put the key in his trouser pocket, reached for the bamboo stick that was waiting and then slammed it – on his bottom and breasts. On the last Friday of every month he wanted to beat her and “take out his anger on her,” he said out loud “Legal Tribune Online” at his trial.
Now the Göttingen regional court has sentenced him to a suspended sentence of one and a half years: guilty of assault in office, coercion in a particularly serious case and deprivation of liberty. However, the judgment is not yet final.
The now 60-year-old had already been sentenced to an eleven-month suspended sentence in March 2022, but the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) partially overturned the verdict. Now two further acts from the summer of 2015 have also been assessed as coercion.
Professor beats women with bamboo stick
Two doctoral students and one employee had to endure the bamboo blows. On both occasions, the man asked the witness to take down her pants and underpants for the beating, said presiding judge David Küttler. After at least ten painful blows, he hugged the woman and asked her to thank her.
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“It was humiliation of the first order,” said the judge. The professor ignored the fact that the doctoral student refused corporal punishment and had previously threatened her with similar acts to end the supervision of her doctoral thesis if she resisted.
The judges have now made the earlier conviction even more severe. The defense initially did not comment on whether it would appeal the verdict.
Those who were beaten appear as co-plaintiffs
The three women affected had already appeared as co-plaintiffs in the first trial. “I am very happy for my client,” said Steffen Hörning after the hearing. “She has been through years of suffering with a lot of psychological stress.” The lawyer criticized the defense strategy as “sexist and racist.”
In his verdict, the presiding judge also rejected the defense’s claim that the young woman had made a “punishment agreement” with the professor because she allegedly knew this from her school days in Vietnam. Rather, the defendant put the witness under massive pressure and forced her to subject herself to humiliation, said Küttler.
“No sexual motives”
The professor had denied sexual motives for the beating on the bare bottom and said that he had rather wanted to motivate the doctoral student to perform better and prepare her for future jobs. He perceived the blows as more of a “blunder”.
If the verdict becomes final, the professor at the University of Göttingen would automatically lose his civil servant status. After the incidents became known, the university had banned the professor from conducting official business since 2017 and sued for his removal from office.
Sources:“Legal Tribune Online”DPA.